Sunday, October 27, 2013

Q: Take a seven-by-seven square grid. Arrange the names of U.S. cities or towns in regular crossword fashion inside the grid so that the cities used have the highest possible total population, according to the 2010 Census. For example, if you put Chicago in the top row and Houston in the sixth row, both reading across, and then fit Atlanta, Oakland and Reno coming down, you'll form a mini-crossword. And the five cities used have a total population, according to the 2010 census, of 5,830,997. You can do better. (Note: This is a two-week challenge)

The first problem is going to be finding a list of U.S. cities by their 2010 census values, to match Will's example. Using the values from Wikipedia, I get a slightly higher value of 5,831,809 for his example grid. And trying to go to census.gov returns a message that it is closed due to the government shutdown. My other issue with this puzzle is whether or not common abbreviations like LA and NYC will be accepted. I hope Mr. Shortz will post here and clarify his intentions with the puzzle, or at least give more details next week on the air. In any case, this one will be a hard puzzle to discuss or hint at since there aren't really any good ways to give a hint. Even giving your population total will give too much away, so I think it's going to be a hard two weeks to comment.

Update: Using a revised list from Wikipedia showing the Top 25 U.S. cities, I get the exact same values as Will:
Chicago = 2,695,598
Houston = 2,099,451
Atlanta = 420,003
Oakland = 390,724
Reno = 225,221
TOTAL = 5,830,997

Thursday, October 10, 2013

Q: What familiar saying in seven words has seven consonants in a row? The answer is a common saying, in ordinary English. Sometimes it's expressed in nine words rather than seven, but it's the same saying. And either way, in one spot it has seven consecutive consonants. What saying is it?

Thursday, October 03, 2013

Q: Name something in seven letters that most people keep in their homes. Take the first, third, fourth and seventh letters and rearrange them. The result will be a four-letter word naming something that the seven-letter thing is commonly used for. What is it?

For some reason, the answer hasn't yet come to me so I can't post a clue. I'll leave that to all of you.